Eric Mensah Kumeh
March 1, 2019

  • Africa remains a needy in the midst of plenty
  • Corruption is pervasive depriving Africans of their rights
  • Youths have a vital role in demanding good governance
  • But they first, they have to break out, develop themselves and demand accountability

The world as we know is changing and very fast. Population growth, irresponsible consumption and its resulting climate change imperils humanity in its entirety. If we work hard enough, we can save humanity from the impending doom. Meanwhile, our capabilities to adapt to current climate change impacts are not same. Africa, our home, lags behind in building its adaptive capacity as well as harnessing the potential climate change mitigation presents for its much needed economic development. Bad governance remains pervasive and corruption deep-rooted.

Even today, the ordinary African youth not is guaranteed access to basic human needs such as food, shelter and health care. His quest and fight for survival is devoid of the enabling environment that makes dreams followed through with diligent work a reality. Many have lost hope in nurturing and seeing out their dreams in our motherland. For others, their dreams can only be achieved elsewhere. Even if it means dying in the process of getting there. But is this really the Africa we want? An Africa that kills the hopes and aspirations of her youth and leaves it without a future? An Africa where our golden eggs choose to incubate in the desert, hatch at sea, be imprisoned on quicksand, and live off vestiges of misplaced hope? An Africa where the strangest of strangers are welcomed and supported to succeed while our very own languish and remain bottom feeders? Are our people worth any less? What happened to our beautiful, evergreen home of abundance? Well, whatever your answer(s) may be, we, African youth, are a big part of the problem.

Far too long, we have sat in silence, anticipating the older generation to make the world a better place for us. But evidence abound that this has not always worked out. For ours is not their world, for they have but a short while to live in our world. If we are to build the world we envision, a world where the African youth is not reduced to fighting for survival but liberated in his mind to innovate, work and thrive in his motherland, then we need to act. Now more than ever, we need to raise and say, enough is enough!

Ours is not a call to violence. Rather, a call to step up and ask the right questions. A quest to challenge the status quo. A quest for knowledge, innovation and sacrifice. A call to save our bleeding motherland . A quest to build a better, brighter Africa for ourselves and generations to come. If you thirst for this quest, then join me so that together, we can breakout from the bondage of bad governance and move towards an open, prosperous, free and fair Africa worthy of our resource endowments.

You can start by reading and contributing to our Blogs. Our Open Letter, Resources and Polls sections provide you with a platform to make specific inputs towards natural resource governance and development discourses in Africa.

We acknowledge that the road that lies ahead is not an easy one, but with your help, we can build for ourselves a Movement, a Community that breaks us out, and moves us closer to the Africa we truly want.

Breakout today and now!

SDGs addressed in this article